1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to multi-model collaboration spaces, and more specifically to context-aware visualization, notification, aggregation, and formation in a multi-model collaboration space.
2. Introduction
Collaboration platforms offer varying frameworks for users to communicate, share information, and work together from virtually anywhere. From wikis and blogs; from email and conferencing; from web-based collaboration systems to 3D collaboration spaces offered by virtual worlds, existing collaboration platforms vary widely in their use and approach for collaboration. Some platforms, such as wikis, blogs, and web-based conferencing systems, are based on the notion that a common space can be accessed through a browser and implemented by users to collaborate. Other platforms, such as Microsoft Groove and SharePoint, are based on the notion that users can collaborate through shared access to a set of files or documents. Here, the collaboration client provides a view of the data for users to work remotely and synchronize their work to a common repository.
Additional collaboration platforms have emerged, such as Google Wave and Thinkature, which offer real-time collaboration tools that allow users to create and manage their own collaboration spaces. The ability to create a collaboration space allows users to tailor collaboration spaces to the needs of a project or particular collaborative effort. The persistence of these spaces further allows users to continue a collaboration in a given space, while also having access to some of the contacts, contents, and tools previously added to the collaboration space.
These approaches, however, are often disjoint and lack integration. They fail to provide meaningful features which are useful, and even required, for enterprise collaboration. Users cannot easily reference activities in a collaboration space with activities in other collaboration spaces, resulting in a limited collaboration experience. These approaches also fail to provide users with real-time, context sensitive views relevant to the collaboration activity, which would greatly enrich the user experience. Other relevant information, such as the history of a collaboration, is typically either not accessible or not easily navigatable and reusable for subsequent relevant collaborations.